These Vicious Masks: A Swoon Novel(17)
I stared at the druggist. He stared back. This was his shop. He had nowhere to go. I couldn’t waste the rest of the day trying to wear him down. I looked to the druggist’s two apron-clad assistants. They immediately spun around and pretended to busy themselves with rearranging some shelves.
Hang it all, this wasn’t supposed to be the difficult part! First the doctors from the Medical Society and the Harveian Society barely answered our questions. They all told us that there were too many hopeless cases in London, and they did not have the time to help narrow our search. And now these druggists were guarding valuable Crown secrets? Could no one in this damn city provide a simple piece of information?
With a sigh, I turned to the exit when the bell jangled, and in walked Mr. Kent with Laura behind him.
“Nothing from mine,” he said. “Any exciting information here?”
“Only that he thinks their sales log is none of our business.”
He frowned. “Oh. Well, that won’t do at all, will it?” He took off his hat and floated down the narrow aisle of glass cases to the druggist at the back counter. “Hello, Mr. . . . Mortimer, is it?”
“Yes, sir, but as I told the young lady—”
“Do you have a daughter, Mr. Mortimer?”
“Yes, I do, but I don’t see—”
“Imagine if, God forbid, little Miss Mortimer went missing today. Would you scour the city, searching day and night, imploring any gracious citizen who might possess the slightest bit of information to help you find her?”
“Why, yes—”
“Then please take this opportunity to be that gracious citizen and answer this question for us: Have you had any customers since yesterday purchase linseed?”
“No, sir. No one,” the druggist answered soberly, as if he, too, was disappointed by the answer.
Mr. Kent put his hat back on. “Ah, well, that was all we wished to know. Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Mortimer. I shall send all my sick and dying acquaintances here, should they ask for a recommendation. Good day.”
“Good day!” Laura added kindly, unnecessarily.
And just like that, we had the answer and were back outside, the city bustling around us. As we crossed the road toward the next shop on the block, Mr. Kent whistled a tune, and I could hold my tongue no longer. “How in heaven’s name did you do that?”
“Well, first you might notice the shop was called Mortimer’s, rather than Mortimer and Son’s, but the man wore a wedding ring and didn’t look portly enough to own a successful shop and be childless. So you might look for signs of a daughter and find the display case in the back holding two dolls dressed to fit the distinctive tastes of two little girls. They were English wax dolls from the craze of 1876, but one wore a hat that was fashionable in 1879, which might make you wonder why one was more neglected than the other. The answer to that is sitting in a vase containing lilies and cypress, which any flower girl worth her salt will tell you means innocence and mourning the dead. So mentioning Mr. Mortimer’s daughter would arouse his emotions for both the tragically deceased one and his precious living one.”
“You . . . noticed . . . all that?”
“No, don’t be absurd. It’s not that complicated. I just appealed to his humanity.”
In front of us, Laura spun around and pointed at a haberdashery street stall, as if possessed by some sort of hat demon. “Nick, can I try that one on? Evelyn, I’m terribly sorry, but Mama will be suspicious if I don’t return home with anything! I only need one moment!” Before we could say anything, she hurried back to put that moment to good use.
“Just one, Kit!” Mr. Kent called after her, then turned to me with a shrug. “We all have our weaknesses.”
The rest of the afternoon was spent repeating this dismal pattern. We started the search near Trafalgar Square and moved west, concentrating on the druggists and pharmacies in the wealthier neighborhoods under the assumption that Mr. Cheval’s friend, who had the means to consult many doctors, would be living nearby. Most of the shops had not sold linseed in the past two days, and the several that had eventually led us to the wrong customers. If there were two constants to the day, it was that Laura could never own too many hats and that nothing brought us any closer to Mr. Cheval.
“I hate to say this right now,” Laura cheerfully announced when we trudged out of another chemist shop. “But the Pickfords’ dinner party is in two hours. We really must return home, otherwise Mama will have a fit.”
A groan escaped my lips. The sun was setting, and the shadows of buildings and streetlights stretched long across the streets like prison bars. “We’ve made no progress,” I muttered.
“No cause for alarm, Miss Wyndham,” Mr. Kent said. “I will continue searching and questioning the druggists until the very minute they lock up their stores. And I’ll pester them on their way home, too.”
With a reassuring nod, he called for his own cab and promised to send a full report by the end of the evening.
Our carriage returned to the Kent home, where there was hardly a moment to reflect upon the day and consider our next plan. Lady Kent ambushed me at the foot of the stairs, wielding my dinner invitation to the Pickfords’, and I was forced to graciously thank her for subjecting me to the last event on earth I wanted to attend. I took some lazy care to dress for it, but it did not occupy the hour and a half that Laura spent gratuitously analyzing her outfits.